Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Legend of Queen Opala: Origin - Week 35 / 2021

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Surprise, it's Tuesday again!

The beta was released over last weekend as scheduled, but sadly I had to scale back and remove the main feature that would've been the expedition mechanic due to some last-minute changes.
This will most likely mean yet another beta will be out next month, with that added back in.
The reason I had to make it inaccessable by normal means is that some things would've been hard to implement later if the content has already been interracted with, so I had to make that call.
But again, it'll be included within a September window that'll also fix some Naz'Raala related bugs.

Other than that, this week hasn't been spent on much else than prepping for that beta and then fixing some issues that was reported after release, which makes for a less than exciting update.

Although, there is always a next week!

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Legend of Queen Opala: Origin - Week 34 / 2021

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Heck yeah, you better believe it's Tuesday!

With the end of the month looming over the horizon, this week has mostly been spent on tweaking things for the upcoming beta that'll most likely be hitting over the weekend.
Currently the Quick-Menu has been applied to every corner of Castle Warrengard, but I'm uncertain if I should expand it to the rest of the game just yet or keep it to the citadel for this beta in order to ensure I get some feedback first with less hassle to make any potential changes.
I mentioned before that applying this would allow for sprinting indoors, and on the flip-side, it'd also let you access all the menus (Art Gallery, Encyclopedia etc.) at outdoor locations.
Although, enemies won't politely wait for you to finish polishing ye ol' broomstick, so expect to be ambushed the moment you exit the menus if you're in a hostile area. 

And while Instructor Stella can't be recruited properly, she'll still be available anyway so players can try out the new party training and expedition mechanics, since she will be required for those.
Naz'Raala as a party member and Lady Farah added to the tent mechanic will also be in it!

That'll be all for today, though! See you again next week!

 

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Legend of Queen Opala: Origin - Week 33 / 2021

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It's that faithful day of the week again!

After trying a few different versions, I decided the best layout for the Quick-Menu was to make it simple and straightforward to fit the namesake and functionality. (Preview down below!)
I think this is also the best possible solution to show expedition progress as it's just one button press away, with the extra pop-up only displayed in the Quick-Menu while an expedition is active.
The only downside I could find is that the button press is considered a priority command by the game, so if you were to press it during a dialogue, interraction, etc, it would be queued up to instantly trigger once the previous event finished.

Under normal circumstances, this shouldn't be a problem, but it could have some negative effects if you tried triggering the Quick-Menu during cutscenes since they are more complex, so the solution to that would simply be to manually disable priority commands during cutscenes.
While easy to do, it'll be a bit time consuming since I have to edit every cutscene in the game.

Even if I had scrapped the Quick-Menu idea, I'd still have to edit the cutscenes, because toggling sprinting ON/OFF is another priority command which has to be corrected as well.
Doing that will also give me a good excuse to include the sprinting option to all indoor locations.
I intend to assign the Quick-Menu to the A button, and have sprinting moved to Z/Shift instead.
I'm not a PC gamer, but I think Shift for sprinting is better and somewhat common?

Anyhoo, that's a lot of talking for barely any substance!


Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Legend of Queen Opala: Origin - Week 32 / 2021

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What the heck, Tuesday again already...!?

At least I got some work done this week so all those days weren't for nothing, ho ho!
The in-game results of expeditions has been finished, these are things like your troops showing up in locations currently being explored during the cooling timer and your soldiers replacing the Beldorian Forces at checkpoints you've taken over.
So, yes, this means the Imperial Manor can now be visited again once you liberate Grand Bridge.

Another thing I've been working on is some kind of way to let the player know when an expedition is active/over without it being intrusive or in the way.
Initially this was done as a pop-up icon during dialogues, which I scrapped since it'd be annoying having to talk or interract with someone, just to see if the latest expedition is done or not.
Next, I tried assigning a worldmap to a button, with the current status showing up there.
This was good, but...if I could do that, why not take it one step further by making this button press a kind of "Quick-Menu" instead where you can access the most useful inventory items directly, such as the Art Gallery, Encyclopedia, Journal and the World Map?
And this is where I am now, I'm experimenting with the Quick-Menu to ensure it works properly without colliding with other events or glitch something unforseen before it's approved.

Thus, that's all for today! See you again next Tuesday!

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Legend of Queen Opala: Origin - Week 31 / 2021

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Time for another Tuesday round-up!

Right off the bat, I should disclose I took a few days off last week..."vacation", if you will!
But I'm already back at work and what I've done so far is more tinkering with the expedition mechanic and adding beastman variations for one of the art styles in Gabrielle's CG Scene.

There is still a lot more to be done with the expeditions as it has a lot of things running in the background, taking story progression into account, expeditions in progress reflected in the world, etc, but I aim to have the majority of it done by the time the next beta is released, which should be toward the end of this month.

I'm afraid that has to be it for today, so let's look ahead to next week instead!